With all these new tech innovations lining up in a seemingly endless queue in the last decade, it has been hard for the average bystander to keep track of what is going on. That is a task even harder for the legal profession since the law appears bent on keeping up with its notoriety of always being off the pace with emerging technologies.
Mostly, we find ourselves in circumstances where novel tech solutions are up and running and where regulations have not been set in place with appropriate safeguards and clear rules. Take, for example, the AI situation, where the European Commission has set to work on several proposals, which all remain in draft form.
Yet a different situation has somehow developed when it comes to intellectual property (IP) law. And when you consider how IP has become a great runner in contemporary free markets that keeps track of emerging technologies, and most of its angles, it perhaps makes sense. High stakes for IP rights in new digital environments, high priority in legal attention?
And if IP law will be the first to provide clarity, what would this mean for the metaverse which intends to provide content created by its developers as well as its users? What rights would the metaverse users and creators be able to wield regarding their IP?
Now from a legal perspective, the first question to precede that would have to be: what is the Metaverse?
It has been defined numerous times as a digital environment that will blur the lines between the physical and digital world, built on blockchain technology to derive from its many perks. The concept of a virtual environment with immersive online experiences that employs augmented reality and virtual reality tech, while determining a way to securely facilitate transactions has been groundbreaking.
But at least part of that first concept, as we’ve often discussed, isn’t new at all. In the last decade, long before Facebook’s Meta, we’ve seen games and social networks building on that “plugged in” concept established long ago in science fiction.
Secondly, what is the economic aspect of the Metaverse evolution? Well, there are many. The virtual environment built on blockchain tech will host and enhance various digital economies. For a lot of consumer brands, the Metaverse is considered to be the next big thing as it will indelibly change how brands interact with consumers. For instance, consumers will be given the opportunity to interact with brands and experience their products and services without having a single item physically delivered to their doorstep.
The fact is that many industries will prosper. Sectors such as finance, gaming, and entertainment are probably going to immediately experience the effects of the Metaverse. Some already are. Some are long familiar with the way cryptocurrencies are used in the Metaverse ecosystem, giving the go-ahead to an already rapidly developing industry.
Managing IP rights in the Metaverse: Is there a How-to?
The booming expansion of blockchain and the introduction of NFTs opened the discussion of digital assets. Putting back power in the hands of the users, everyone was given the opportunity to become a true owner – not simply of digital assets on the blockchain but of legitimate virtual representations of real-world physical items. For the first time, proof of ownership was self-verifiable.
And that is the thing with the Metaverse. Everything will have something to do with ownership, differentiating traditional social media from Metaverse. We can foresee the significance of digital assets in how games will describe user avatars: clothing, tools, attributes, land and others. Programs related to the Metaverse will be developed and safeguarded by IP law. It is probable that creators will race to be the first to implement novel Metaverse inventions, programs, interactive tools or other yet-to-be-described software.
How Intellectual Property law will transform and adapt to new circumstances is still to be seen. Any company wanting to push its products into the Metaverse, something as a series of interoperable and decentralized environments, will consider it essential to establish licensing arrangements with the Metaverse platform provider
IP licenses usually encompass terms such as the scope of the license, violations and royalty rates as significant components. What other components of the licensing arrangements should include would become important in the future to establish.
For instance, the possibility of extending the license for large uses and determining future uses would be useful in relation to the basic nature of the Metaverse. In other words, current licensing structures won’t do the job properly in the Metaverse. It has to adapt to the Metaverse to work.
It is more than likely that many IP violations will regularly happen in the Metaverse taking into account the complicated nature of operations within. The complexity in interactions would probably make it really hard to detect the perpetrators.
Even though IP rights have a bright future within the Metaverse, advanced legal mechanisms of protection have to be invented to address future infringements. IP rights have to be immersed properly into the immersive online experience known as the Metaverse.
With or Without the Metaverse, We all Love IPs
Everybody likes a portion of intellectual property. Something solely ours, our creation which can be broadly monetised.
There are not many open-world games where you can obtain such a broad amount of IP rights or become an influencer. The lack of it is mostly connected to the lack of incentives.
NFT game companies objective should be to build platforms and offer any individual or organisation to provide with some game content. If it gets included in the game, you get most of the credit (if not all of it). The trade-off would include not only an authorization to the gaming company to use characters or related game content, yet also to sell the content and earn profits.
And this isn’t just technically speaking but visually too. In some upcoming games, there will even be a permanent location in the Metaverse with monuments built to honour the contributors.
The problem with most existing games is that they don’t give incentives to game content creators, and above all, don’t understand the underlying power of the community. The system should also include influencers, giving them the opportunity to sell the game on their channel to fans while streaming, leaving a small portion of the handling fee to its developers in return.
Future games have to acknowledge your IP rights and help empower you with them, to demonstrate a new era of blockchain gaming.
The future is built on the foundations of community, so keep creating.